Jeannie Gunn

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Photographic portrait of Jeannie Gunn taken in 1902

Jeannie Gunn

OBE (pen name, Mrs Aeneas Gunn) (5 June 1870 – 9 June 1961) was an Australian novelist, teacher and Returned and Services League of Australia
(RSL) volunteer.

Life

Jeannie Taylor was born in

Presbyterian Church.[2] Shortly after, in early 1902, they travelled to Darwin (then called Palmerston) and then to Elsey, an outlying cattle station on the Roper River, near the current town of Mataranka. After a year at the Elsey, Jeannie Gunn's husband died in March 1903 from complications of malaria
and she returned to live in Melbourne. She never returned to the Northern Territory.

In Melbourne, after being encouraged by friends, she began writing the books for which she would become famous.

Rolf Boldrewood.[1] By 1990, over a million copies of the book had been sold.[2]

During the

Monbulk RSL, attending every event they organised over two decades. Although she never completed another novel, she did publish further stories about the characters from her previous works.[1] In 1939, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire
for her writing and advocacy work.

Jeannie Gunn died at Hawthorn, in 1961. The memoirs of her work with the RSL, My Boys: A book of Remembrance, was published in 2000.

Significance of works

We of the Never Never is regarded as being significant as a precursor of the 1930s landscape writers. Already in 1908, Australia was a significantly urbanised country. The book was seen to provide symbols of things that made Australia different from anywhere else, underwriting an Australian legend of life and achievement in the outback where "men and a few women still lived heroic lives in rhythm with the gallop of a horse" in "forbidding faraway places".[2] In 1988 the book was referred to as a "minor masterpiece of Australian letters" by Penguin's New Literary History of Australia.[4]

In 1991 Elsey Land Claim No 132 was lodged by the

traditional owners of the land under question, and who were not.[4]

Bibliography

Novels

Non-fiction

  • My Boys: A Book of Remembrance (2000)

References

  1. ^
    Melbourne University Press
    . Retrieved 13 March 2007.
  2. ^ a b c Forrest, Peter (1990). "They of the Never Never" (pdf – 14 pages). Occasional Papers (no 18). Northern Territory Library Service. Retrieved 11 January 2008.
  3. ^ Wilkinson, Jane (23 September 2000). "Gunn, Jeannie (Mrs Aeneas) (1870–1961)". Australian Women's Archives Project. Retrieved 13 March 2007.
  4. ^ a b Ramsey, Alan (10 April 1999). "Fighting for the Never Never". Sydney Morning Herald (print) – transcript at The Mail Archive. Retrieved 11 January 2008.

External links

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